My personal theory is that the word, monty comes from the French, monte, meaning "to show".

I always heard that General Montgomery, commander of the British forces during WW II, demanded a "Full English Breakfast" every day no matter what the circumstances of the war. The British, always fast to generate new slang or catch phrases, began to refer to the meal as the Full Monty and thence to anything that was total or even over the top.

Here is a fascinating and thorough discussion on the possible origins of the phrase "the full monty" (including the two mentioned above), an excerpt from the newsletter of the Quote/Unquote I mentioned a little while back (the piece is just a bit too long to copy and paste here)...the URL:

http://www1.btwebworld.com/quote-unquote/p0000029.htm

possible origins of the phrase "the full monty"

I'm beginning to believe that I was right. http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=31812

Forgive us, llama32. I think we now have a full potty.

We *could discuss this where it belongs... [bringing out dead-horse emoticon for the non-newbies]

A Word for Today is not a Weekly Theme. Wordsmith posts the Weekly Themes, and they never refer to only one word.

A Word for Today is not a Weekly Theme. Wordsmith posts the Weekly Themes, and they never refer to only one word. Miscellany refers to varied kinds, so any thing can be included there.

possible origins of the full monty as per Faldage's "No! no! no! etc...

Sorry, Faldage, but that sounds like ullage to me!

And, now, here's a URL featuring ME and MY OWN message on THIS board!...oh, wait!...I think somebody just did that, didn't they?

And, by the way, welcome to the board llama22 and Casey-Canada, albeit in the middle of this full monty python three-ring circus we seem to be having! Well, at least you know you can be loose and humorous here!

that the word, monty comes from the French, monte, meaning "to show".

Sorry, llama22, but the phrase had nothing to do with show (although it seems to have taken on this meaning, particularly in US, since the film), and monte would have to have dropped the r from montre.
But many theories are no better, so you could still be right.

Rod

 

It is funny that nobody yet mentioned the German expression in voller Montur which was certainly in use before 1980 in the sense of "completely dressed up with all accessories" referring to uniforms, also of students' associations etc.